quote:
"Jasal?" Her father turned, the on-shore breeze tugging his hair.
"Yes, Pa?" she giggled.
His smile vanished. "Jasal, I am not your father." He swept some hair from his eyes. "I'm the interstellar spacecraft 1/10 Procyon Invicarion. You're currently psychotic, in a drift-state. Please re-construct your mental state. Something is up."
I feel that this is a problematic start because the reader does not get drawn in to the fantasy before being TOLD it is an illusion. The reader does not participate by getting invested in the father/daughter realtionship.
If her imagined realtionship IS important to the story, then beef it up, make it stronger allow us to 'feel' it.
If it is not important then ditch it, or at least don't put it up front and make us think it is important.
quote:
Something was forced into her mind; an image of a translucent-skinned woman immersed in an icy, pink gel. Black, tubes entwined her pale limbs, like mambas burrowing in and out of the the anaemic flesh. The head was sheathed in a smooth, brown mask that curved away, bifurcating into a swarm of black worms. Her legs were drawn up as she curled within a pale ovoid, like some half-formed avian foetus.
She is not the agency at work in this passage. Something else is doing this to her. She is just bobbing along having stuff 'forced' on her. How about something like:
"Invicarion disrupted her drift-state dreaming and lit her mind with a new vision. The beach disappeared,the sea replaced with an icy, pink gel." or something
I'm not sure how she knows it is icy.
quote:
Black, tubes entwined her pale limbs, like mambas burrowing in and out of the the anaemic flesh"
Does this mean 'like how mambas are black', or 'like how mambas burrow' or 'like how mambas entwine'? Mambas are grey or green. (black mambas are named after the black colouration inside their mouths). They also live in trees, they don't burrow. Mambas are venomous and not constrictors, they don't entwine limbs. The image would be stronger, IMO, if you said 'python'. This brings to mind the idea of entwining and has a cultural connotation of the 'pythoness', the visionary priestess at the omphalos at Delphi, which may work for you.
Perhaps try making it two sentences along the lines of:
Black tubes entwined her pale limbs like mambas. They threaded in and out of her anaemic flesh."
I did have trouble with 'like some half-formed avian foetus'. It is either a foetus or an embryo. You can have a mal-formed or ill-made foetus but I don't think you can have a half-formed one. Unless you meant 'like some semi-avian foetus'.
In all, I would say that the first part (the illusion) is under-developed and could be fleshed out in order for the second part (the new vision) to have the intended impact.
I do think I would read more, mainly because I enjoy the geiger-esque colours and imagery.
I hope this helps.
[This message has been edited by Andrew_McGown (edited August 27, 2009).]